


Practically Gift Wrapped

by Anonymous



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, i know the summary looks like that but it's not in statement form
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:53:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22652800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Statement of Gertrude Robinson, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, regarding a 90s dance craze and the oblivious researcher she met at an office party.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 117
Collections: Anonymous





	Practically Gift Wrapped

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this [comic.](https://turnipwine.tumblr.com/post/189444823519/workin-through-some-tma-requests-in-my-free-time) i haven't been able to get it out of my head since i saw it.

She didn’t normally come to these things.

In fact, the last office party Gertrude attended was back in ‘96, when you couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing that god-awful macarena song. Someone had inevitably put it on at the party. Reluctant servant of the Beholding Gertrude may be, but she just couldn’t stand the stares of every person in the room as the europop beat started up, gazing expectantly at their esteemed Head Archivist to see if she would join them in their inane hand-flapping dance.

So, Gertrude excused herself from the party and hadn’t come back since.

She had other stuff to do, of course. A lukewarm punch-bowl and store-bought cheese-and-crackers, as appetizing as they sounded, had to take a backseat to averting the apocalypse. 

Apocalypses.

_God she was getting old._

But Gertrude supposed that was all in the past now. Ever since the blow-up with the Cult of the Lightless Flame, Gertrude had an inkling of an idea what was really happening with these rituals. A dangerous hypothesis to put in action, yes, but after doing this for five decades and too many close-calls, Gertrude had reasonable confidence in her plan. 

So, given that Reynar wouldn’t be attempting his ritual for a little longer yet, Gertrude decided to have some fun. 

“Fun” might have been a bit of a stretch for the scene in front of her. She had no Archive Assistants to talk to, all dead or gone. Elias was off god-knows-where, scheming or scheduling or probably both, and just about every familiar face she might have known from that last fateful party was missing. Elias had traded them out quickly after his promotion, down to the dutiful receptionist at the front desk.

The third-floor lobby was full to maximum capacity, post-grads and middle-aged office workers and over-eager paranormal fanatics all clumped into little groups, like the only thing to distinguish this as a party was the lack of cubicles and faint background music.

Perched from her people-watching spot at the back of the room, Gertrude entertained herself with hazy thoughts of retirement. Perhaps she’d take a cruise to the Caribbean or vacation to the south of France once this was all done. World travel wasn’t a foreign concept to her, but outside of a few trysts with Adelard in the States for the hell of it, most of her adventures were business-related. It was really quite a miserable existence, now that she was thinking about it.

Maybe she’d take up knitting. That seemed like a perfectly becoming thing for an old lady to do.

So, while Gertrude contemplated the possibility of a new hobby, and one that would be blind-accessible to boot, the party went on.

It went on with such mundanity that Gertrude was caught off guard when a young man wandered over to stand against the same wall as her.

“Hello,” she said, eyes seeking out contact with his own. They were large and dark, hidden behind glasses and examining his drink cup.

He jumped a bit at the greeting.

Curious piqued or perhaps just bored, she pressed on. 

“I’m Gertrude Robinson, Head Archivist.”

His brows scrunched up in recognition, and Gertrude pushed down a feeling of guilt at the gesture. He looked like the kind of person she would have picked out as an assistant or servant to the cause, not too long ago.

“Jonathan Sims, but you can call me Jon,” he responded at last. “Senior Researcher. I’ve heard about you before, but I don’t believe we’ve had the chance to meet.”

“No, we haven’t,” she said.

There was something bugging her, something about this man that felt off, not that Gertrude could put her finger on it.

“You seem awful young for a senior researcher.” Gertrude smiled, gesturing to herself. “But then again, maybe I’m just old.”

Jon laughed at that. 

“I’ve been at the Institute for a few years actually.” He shifted his weight, and Gertrude could see the red punch slap up against the side of his cup, bright-red and sticky and thick with sugar.

There was a steely gaze on her back. Gertrude repressed a shudder, letting the pinprick of goosebumps run up and over her arms with practiced familiarity.

“I’m not used to coming to these sorts of events,” Jon continued.

_Who are you?_

“Me neither.” She winked conspiratorially. Gertrude was good at that act, when she wanted to be. Michael always bought it wholesale; Eric scowled and called it the “little-old lady” move.

_Who are you,_ the question repeated in the back of her mind, and something gave way. Her vision warped accordingly. 

Now, it was important to establish something about Gertrude’s powers as the Archivist—namely, that she didn’t have many. There were the statements she collected, and the way people seemed inclined to answer her questions when she phrased them _just so,_ but other than that, Gertrude had remained mostly fear-free. It was a point of pride, really, that she had managed to stay human for so long without caving into the Hunger and the Knowing.

Which is why it startled her so much when she Saw Jonathan Sims.

Well and truly Saw him, beyond the neatly-pressed button up and untailored suit jacket over a scrawny frame. Beyond the slightly scruffy haircut of a child playing at adult, and the thick glass frames that hid sharp eyes. 

Over his shoulders lay a hairy shape, eight twitching black lines that blended out into a shroud of darkness. Around his head were a crown of silvery webs, not quite touching but drifting oh-so-close every time he inhaled. Marked deep by the Web, but not yet claimed.

She realized distantly that he was calling her name.

“--are you alright? Gertrude?”

She smiled at him. Better not to provoke. Not with so many people in the room.

“Quite alright, Jonathan. Just something that’s been bugging me.” _Hah._

She took a breath and let the compulsion filter through her voice. Not enough to pull the statement clearly lying there, not even enough to win over an Agent of the Web. 

“Why do you work here?”

His brow wrinkled, like he suspected something was off, but Jon spoke up a moment later.

“To know, I suppose.” His gaze fell across the room, on some hazy and distant point beyond the double doors to the rest of the building. To the stairs and the Archives below.

“This place is a...treasure trove of information,” he continued, grasping at words for a feeling his limited human knowledge could not supply. “I want to study the stories that lie within these walls. I will separate the wheat from the chaff, the real encounter from the imagined, and from those pieces, I will piece together the narrative.”

Jon stopped abruptly, mouth snapping shut hard enough that Gertrude could hear the clicking of his molars.

He averted his eyes, curling in on an already-small figure.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I don’t know what came over me just now.”

Gertrude smiled again, willing it into something genuine. 

“No problem, dear boy. This conversation has been illuminating.” 

She could See the murky shapes spider legs writhing around him now, the silk stands twisting and furling away from where her Gaze landed.

“Yes, well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you. Excuse me,” Jon murmured, and within the blink of an eye, was ducking out and away from where Gertrude had cornered him. As he turned his back, she saw the flush on his neck, a physical manifestation of his perceived slight in conversation and the rudeness with which he’d departed.

Gertrude could hardly find herself annoyed. She’d been the one who provoked him—pulled his strings even, not that Jonathan Sims would recognize such a sensation.

No, instead, she only felt a swelling pity in her old chest.

_The pursuit of knowledge._

How noble. How naive. 

But still, she supposed Jon hadn’t gotten himself killed yet. No, against all odds he’d slipped through the Web and found his way here. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Gertrude turned her attention to the stare still burning into her back. 

She had questions.

⌾

Elias smiled as she approached. She hadn’t thought about it much, but her boss was blandly handsome, with silvery blonde hair and pale eyes similar to her own. It was a far cry from the long coppery hair he’d sported in the early 90s when he first began working at the Magnus Institute. Briefly, Gertrude contemplated what she might have looked like, if someone had dared to possess her body that way. The possibility of her skin being stretched over one of Orsinov’s mannequin dancers didn’t seem as awful anymore.

“Speak of the devil and she shall appear,” Elias greeted, voice low enough that no interns would overhear him over the din of the room. “What is Gertrude Robinson doing at an office party?”

She huffed, unimpressed at his jovial tone.

“My job. Like you should be doing yours.”

An eyebrow raised in response. 

“Oh?” 

She scowled. There was a time when she used to surprise him, to scare him—his too-human Archivist. He must have grown accustomed after the second of third ritual, and a petty part of her wished it wasn’t so. She wanted to strike fear into his heart again the way he’d so often tried to do to her.

Never let it be said that Gertrude wasn’t a patient woman.

“I’m surprised you’d let the Web in here in the first place. It’s almost as hard to get rid of as the Stranger or the Corruption, and not nearly as easy to identify.”

He spread his arms wide, balancing an overfull glass of champagne between his forefinger and thumb. Funny; she hadn’t seen any drinks besides that terrible punch when she came in. 

“Times are changing, Gertrude. Alliances are shifting in the wake of our noble work.”

Elias leaned in close. She felt the long-cultivated boundary of personal space dissolving between them, but still her skin did not crawl.

“Just yesterday Peter Lukas came to me for scraps. He was barely tangible. I couldn’t even bring myself to make him beg, I felt so bad about the number you did on him.”

Gertrude felt a distant satisfaction. The Lukases were monsters in a different sort of way—never taking enough for her to intervene, but always rolling on like the Fog of their patron. She savored that humiliation, even more so than the rigging of a plastic explosive under her practiced hands.

Like he was reading her thoughts, Elias spoke up.

“I think I’ll buy him a subscription to The Guardian. It’ll be hard to ship it out to sea, but I have my ways.”

_Changing the subject again._

“What are you planning?”

Elias shifted, smug and self-satisfied with a secret Gertrude had not yet sussed out.

“Marvelous, isn’t it?”

She did not need to ask to what—to whom—he was referring.

“Messy,” she corrected. “I’ve never seen someone touched so heavily with so little follow-through.”

Elias nodded.

“He was eight years old. Chance encounter with a Leitner.”

He looked at her expectantly. 

Gertrude did not react. An embarrassing attempt, as always. Last week he’d thrown out Gerard Keay’s name. The week before, Salesa’s. 

“Practically gift-wrapped,” she said instead. “Whatever could you use him for?”

If he was disappointed with her stone-walling, he did not let on. The mild expression had not once changed on his face this entire conversation.

“Like I said, Gertrude, alliances are shifting. I’ve chosen to accept Jonathan’s presence as a peace offering. Express approval, even, for our plans going forward.”

She shivered. “Our” did not include her, and she felt the Gaze of the Eye heavy at that moment, though she had no statement to give.

Very faintly, she heard those opening notes of the macarena. 

It was real, the same way a dream was real, the same way the Spiral created doorways to nowhere. There was no music playing when she walked into the party, and there was no champagne being served.

Elias sipped at his drink politely.

Gertrude thought very carefully about not stabbing Elias in those gleaming green eyes. She did not think about navigating to the heart of the Tunnels, or of burning his body with all the heat of Agnes Montague’s stolen flame, or of slitting his throat like Trevor Herbert would a vampire.

She did not think, and the music faded out.

There would be no more office parties for Gertrude Robinson.

⌾

The hole in her chest hurt. 

She wasn’t expecting it to hurt so much, but it thrummed like the pressure of the Earth in a way the two bullets in her leg did not. Elias Bouchard—Jonah Magnus’—willingness to get his hands dirty obviously did not extend to actual marksmanship.

Distantly, she wondered how she was still alive. She knew, _proper knowledge, not Knowing,_ that it took about point-two-five gallons to die from blood loss, and the sticky warmth against her sweater felt like plenty. Perhaps it was another quirk of her role. She’d never bothered to explore much, beyond the statements. Hadn’t wanted to and hadn’t needed to. 

Gertrude wheezed and cursed. Retirement wasn’t looking much like an option anymore, and _damn,_ she had really wanted to swim with those dolphins in Mexico.

A shadow loomed into her field of vision. Jonah Magnus in the body of Elias Bouchard, disheveled but once again smug. She’d caught the look of surprise, or maybe even terror when he’d intercepted her in the tunnels. Gertrude had relished the way his pupils dilated in fear. Annoying really, for it to be gone so quickly afterwards.

“Oh Gertrude,” he said.

She cursed again. The damn man couldn’t leave her alone, even in death. His god dictated he had to stay and watch, but she knew it was the petty, human part of him that would gloat.

“We had a good few decades, didn’t we?”

_Absolutely not._ Jonah Magnus sat behind a desk and color-coded schedules. Gertrude got her hands dirty, let dirt and blood and detritus gather under her fingernails for a world that didn’t need saving. It pleased her that Jonah hadn’t known that little fact either. That he’d effectively bankrolled some very expensive, international, thrill-seeking vacations for her, even if Gertrude hadn’t appreciated it at the time.

“For what it’s worth,” he continued, “you truly were the best at what you did. Merciless as a monster and retaining almost every ounce of your humanity.”

He shook his head, tsking as Gertrude groped with shaking fingers for his tie. How badly she ached to strangle him. To shut him up for good.

“You always were too slippery to get marked.”

_Marked?_ Her mind scrambled for an explanation that did not come.

He chuckled, and she knew he was reading her. Those safeguards had given way like her chest to the bullet.

“Not much of an Archive, though.” _Archive_ —the word confused her, but its intention didn’t. 

“The Web-Boy,” Gertrude gasped in pain, “It’s him, isn’t it?”

Jonah Magnus in Elias Bouchard’s body hummed in agreement. His shape was growing hazier by the minute. 

“Sharp as ever, Gertrude. I’d say he wound up here by accident, but we both know there are no coincidences with the Mother of Puppets.”

A whole year, then. Jonah had had his plan for over a year. Longer, she supposed, since the Web had been here sometime before that.

_Marked,_ Elias’ voice had said. _An Archive._ The pieces were slotting together.

“Do you really think he’ll survive all fourteen?” 

Gertrude wasn’t sure if she’d actually said that out loud.

Elias’ voice responded anyways.

“You know, I think he just might. Not as clever as you were at that age,” and _didn’t that just flatter Gertrude in her dying moments,_ “but he’s hungrier, eager to please.”

She knew. She’d heard it. She had been the one to rip the words right out from Jonathan Sims' mouth.

Elias let her finish the thought before continuing. 

“This time around, I won’t make the mistake of telling him too much. The Unknowing could make quite a fine motivator in a pinch.”

Gertrude kicked herself mentally. She’d left tapes of her investigation. She picked at the threads of Orsinov’s unholy circus, and never followed through. She’d scoured those breadcrumbs without ever realizing it. 

Gertrude wanted to feel sorry for Jonathan Sims. Her successor would be walking into the perfect trap, unaware of the strings being pulled by the Web, utterly blind in the Holy Place of the Eye. She wanted that pity to well up again, to revel in a remorse she’d abandoned from Michael Shelley’s demise onwards, but it simply did not come to her.

In that moment, even her hatred of Jonah Magnus dwindled.

A numb feeling was spreading ever-wider across her body, and her vision was fading fast. Better that way, so she wouldn’t have to gaze upon Elias Bouchard’s body. 

She was so, so tired.

Gertrude Robinson did not die afraid, in the end. She spared no thought for bitter vengeance or bone-drenching fear. There was no sympathy for trusting young men, nor for those who still lived and would be shaped into tools for human suffering.

Perhaps that was more than Gertrude deserved.

She died with a small smile on her face. The memories were vague at best, of a life of travel and important work, or familiar faces of friends long since passed. The feeling of cat fur under her fingers. 

It did not crumble to ash.

⌾

Jonah Magnus in the body of Elias Bouchard Watched for her final breath, steady and impassive as he saw the life fade from the most formidable human to ever walk this earth. His hand took five minutes longer to stop trembling.

Then, he turned around, winding his way back through the tunnels and to his office above.

He smiled and thought of the partially-written contract splayed out across his desk, one Jonathan Sims’ name printed clearly at the top.

Yes, he thought to himself, and his ever-watching God Above. 

This would be thrilling.

His heel came down hard on a spider scurrying by.

Awash in the triumph of his victory, Jonah Magnus did not see a second one take its place.

A new era for The Archives had begun.


End file.
